- China cancelled the central event of its political calendar for the first time in decades as the deadly coronavirus continues to damage the country.
- The annual meeting of the National People's Congress in Beijing was due to start on March, but will now be delayed.
- Experts say the risk of the disease spreading of the event is high, and measures like a 14-day quarantine on arrivals to Beijing would make the logistics of such an event difficult.
- Experts also say that the decision to delay the event could be the party's effort to signal that it is taking the virus seriously and making fighting it its top priority.
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China cancelled the central event of its political calendar because of the crippling impact of the coronavirus epidemic that has killed more than 2,500 people there.
China was due to kick off the annual meeting of the National People's Congress in Beijing, which symbolically approves the nation's political agenda for the year, on March 5.
But China's state television said on Monday that the event is now postponed, with no new date decided, Reuters reported.
State television said that a new date for the event, which typically runs for 10 days, would come soon, but gave no further details, Reuters reported.
According to The Guardian, this is the first time that the event has been delayed since the Cultural Revolution, which ended in 1976.
Early in the progress of the outbreak, commentators predicted that if the disease kept worsening then the event would likely have to be scrapped.
All people who return to Beijing from other parts of the country are currently put into a mandatory 14-day quarantine, which would make the logistics of a large, national event almost impossible.
Nonetheless, formally abandoning their plans is a stark move that makes clear the authorities there could not exert sufficient control over the virus to protect even their most important event.
The standing committee of the Congress met earlier on Monday before making the decision.
More than 5,000 delegates gather for the event, which runs over two sessions.
An anonymous source familiar with the organization of the events last week told the South China Morning Post that the meetings would be an unacceptable health risk, Business Insider's Mia Jankowicz reported.
"The health risk of convening the annual sessions early next month would be too high when the coronavirus outbreak has not yet been effectively contained," they said.
"The risk of cross infections would be very high for nearly 8,000 people … as well as staff responsible for administering the meetings, under the same roof of the Great Hall of the People."
Ling Li, a lecturer on Chinese politics at the University of Vienna, told Agence France-Presse before the decision was made that China deciding not to delay it would be seen as "unreasonable and signal a desperate effort of the authorities to keep up the appearance of political normality, which is not there."
Dorothy Solinger, a Chinese politics expert at the University of California at Irvine, also told AFP it would be a "smart move to postpone."
"Look at the message that sends," she said. "We (the government) are putting all our effort into combatting the virus. We don't have the time to hold these meetings now."
The coronavirus has now infected more than 70,000 people in China, and has spread to at least 29 other countries.
The outbreak has been a political challenge for China's ruling party, and has caused some in China to call for freedom of speech protections.
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